If you could enter a new world and live a new life, what would you do? For high schooler, Suzu, she’s finally able to work up the courage to sing. What she couldn’t anticipate was the world wanted to listen. Becoming a star in the digital world, she remains anonymous in the real world she wants to get away from. Her life changes when she meets her opposite, the Beast, a mysterious figure that the world wants taken out in the virtual realm of U. In a virtual reality reimagining of Beauty and the Beast, Belle reminds us it’s a tale as old as time for a reason.
Belle
Developer: Studio Chizu
Distributor: Gkids Films
Director & Writer: Mamoru Hosoda
A new social media has taken over the world, billions of users, going to hang out in the land of U. Suzu takes to it since she cannot stand her regular life. Her mother died tragically several years back and she hasn’t been able to connect with her father ever since. She’s mostly alone until she dives into U and starts her new identity as Belle, U’s most beloved singer. Struggling between her regular life and trying to solve the mystery of who the mysterious Beast is, the best fighter in all of U who has made those who deem themselves U’s protectors, public enemy number one.
Belle does a really great job of using traditional two-dimensional animation for the real world while U is done with computer graphic art. While the main retelling of Beauty and the Beast gets told to us through U, we get a lot of Suzu’s life, past and present, in the real world where she grows her friend group into a found family. You can see them get closer as the story goes on and interacting with each other when they likely never would have met without Suzu. The Beauty and the Beast retelling does feel like it needs more time, as do some real world plot elements.
If you’ve heard any of the music for this, you’ll likely want to hear more tracks from its soundtrack. The biggest complaint to give about the music is that it doesn’t feel like there’s enough. It’s not a bad complaint to have since there are several songs, I just found myself wanting more of. It’s definitely a highlight of the whole film. Likely be a playlist I’ll be going back to again and again.
Overall, the movie is trying to do a lot with what run time it has but feels like it might have worked better as a miniseries to let it breathe and develop. There’s several stories being told but they feel like they just need more time to establish themselves. It’s visually stunning but needs some room to fit all its ideas. It does remind me to go back and check out other films by this director that I may have missed or rewatch those that I have.
All images provided by Studio Chizu.
Dr. Bustos
drbustos@comicattack.net
